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TUI "IT-Landscape" reloaded: Office 365

08.11.2018

In the coming weeks, extensive improvements will take place in the TUI "IT landscape". In line with the trend towards digitisation, TUI will create the basis for better customer satisfaction and increased efficiency with the international introduction of Office 365, as well as for better collaboration opportunities within the company.

What is it all about?

Phase 1 of the Office 365 rollout will initially introduce a group-wide, integrated Exchange infrastructure based on Office 365. The Exchange infrastructure is the central system for processing e-mails, calendars and contacts. The conversion of the Exchange infrastructure changes very little for the user. E-mails, calendar entries and contacts can still be processed using Microsoft Outlook and common applications in mobile devices (iPhone, Android, etc.). A noticeable advantage of Office 365 is that each user automatically has a mailbox with a size of 50 GB available, and that often annoying and time-consuming "moving" of e-mails to secure them can be omitted.

A second core objective of Phase 1 is to create the basis for the use of IT tools that can meet customer requirements beyond national borders. In order to use these IT solutions, it is essential that users from all areas of the TUI Group have simple and consistent access to group-wide solutions. One basis for this is a uniform and central system for the administration of all IT users in the TUI Group. As in the past, there are only a few visible points of contact with this system for the user. One example is the daily login to the computer, where user names and passwords are verified so that only authorized users have access to IT systems.

What needs to be done?

In the past, the services described above were provided via an infrastructure installed in local data centers. With Phase 1, these services and the associated data are now moved to the Microsoft cloud (this process is also referred to as "migration"). The first step is to migrate the email mailboxes of all users. The second step is to migrate the user data. Before the migration could begin, extensive conceptual work was necessary to design the architecture in the cloud in such a way that it could meet the requirements of all TUI Group users. In addition, a large number of cross-group processes had to be designed and established in the TUI Group.

What is the current status?

The program activities of Phase 1 started a few months ago. A central programme team with representatives from all TUI IT divisions coordinates the activities. Independent projects in the various countries are responsible for local implementation (i.e. user migration). On the one hand, this programme structure ensures the goal of a homogeneous solution within the TUI Group and makes better use of synergies between the countries. On the other hand, it allows the IT departments in the individual countries to determine the time for migration and the local prioritisation of resources themselves within a certain framework.

The local project in Germany - also known as User Access Management (UAM) - started the active migration of the e-mail mailboxes of all German companies in September 2017 after a careful preparation phase. In total, more than 9500 mailboxes have to be migrated. In addition to the users' actual mailboxes, this also includes team mailboxes, room (booking) mailboxes and various other mailbox types. A complex task that, despite careful preparation and the complexity of an infrastructure that has grown over the years, sometimes does not run smoothly. Nevertheless, the experiences of the first weeks have shown that about 85-90% of all migrations are successful. In case of problems, support teams are available to support our users as quickly as possible. The organisations TUI Business Services, TUI.com, Wolters Reisen and TUI InfoTec have already been successfully migrated. In the coming weeks, TUI Deutschland, TUI Fly, TUI Customer Operation, TUI AG and various smaller German organisations will follow.

Following the migration of the mailboxes, a second step will follow in the first half of 2018 with the migration of user data from all German companies.